First Warhammer Online City Siege Gets Failing Marks

The first Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning city siege has taken place, and to the presumable chagrin of the developers, it sucked.

Warhammer Online developer Mythic Entertainment had apparently hoped it would be at least a month before a city siege occurred in the game, according to Eurogamer, but it happened less than two weeks after the game's launch, and by all reports it did not go nearly the way the designers intended. In a recent interview, Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs described city sieges as a massive undertaking that would require a significant amount of time and effort to successfully complete. "We've laid everything out in a manner that your side has to accomplish a lot, so it's going to take time," he said. "We've seen the other games out there where people can do things late at night while nobody else is on, but it doesn't work that way in WAR. It's impossible. It should be weeks unless we really messed up."

Those words may come back to haunt Jacobs, as forum posts report that the Order capital of Altdorf was successfully attacked by a relatively small force of 30-40 Destruction players, many of whom weren't at max level or using particularly impressive equipment. Worse, the whole thing took place over the course of a single evening, leading many players to suggest that Mythic had, in fact, "really messed up."

The one-sided whomping led some Order players to accuse the Destruction forces of exploiting bugs, while the Destruction side responded with, "We're in your citiez griefing your PQs," and claimed that a lack of order among Order was to blame. Regardless of the reason, one eyewitness to the event provided a particularly detailed and hilarious account of the attack. "I counted the forces of Destruction approach. There were around 30," he wrote. "It's okay, I thought to myself, they have no ram, they are mostly sub-40, they are not a particularly large group. Despite the lack of player defense, there is no way they will get through this place."

"And if they can, it will take so long that we will have a sufficient defense force ready by the time they get to the Lord," he continued. "Five minutes later they were through the wall's door. I thought that was quick consider the lack of ram, but never mind, they've a whole town to fight through now. Twenty seconds later they were at the main keep, having had to fight no guards that I could see, guard patrols being too spaced out. The door on the keep should hold them back a bit, and maybe last longer than the outside doors. Surprisingly, they ran around to the back of the keep and clicked through the rear door to enter the keep in the same way that Order do. No need to bash down the front door at all." The entire attack, which the poster described as "supposed to be the final objective in an epic battle to unlock city sieges," took roughly 15 minutes.

It's perhaps not as poetic as a horseshoe nail, but the next time people want to avoid the loss of a kingdom they should make sure the back door is locked.

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Did they even playtest this whole Siege mechanic then?
Or have they been taking design advice from General Maginot?

Yep, they playtested it in the Guild Beta, and it worked ok. Took ages but was fun all around. Looks like they toned it down loads without testing it at all. Combined with some bugs such as the postern door letting Destruction bypass the main gates.

As a member of Order on the server in question (Karak Eight Peeks) I feel sad that I couldnt have even helped it I wasnt out having fun with friends/asleep for uni the next day. As I actually have a life and am only level 20.

Destruction seem to have just powerleveled a lot of numbers up to tier 4, which unless mythic sort it, order can look forward to no capital for a while. I enjoy the content and Tome of Knowledge in WAR, and wish to continue my slow leveling to soak it all in. Why should I have to power level just cause destruction is full of kids with no commitments. :(

As you can tell, I think this is one giant fuck-up :P

Rofl, now that really blows.

Hope they fix it soon.

We's gon keep takin' yer cities too! We's gon' have a good'n proper WAAAAGH!

No really. We're bad like that.

Nice review, makes me want to give an eye witness account. ^_-

lol, I find that pretty funny. I am sure they will fix it though.

Speaking of fixing stuff, looks like a big patch hit today. 1.01

Looks like Archaon should have had some of those guys on his command staff.

Whoops.

Ah well, happens - WoW didn't get off to a cozy start either. Patch until it works!

Funny thing is, in WoW (back in the day), killing the "king" of an opposing city was a HUGE thing to do. It took several raids working the guards, the opposing faction's players and then a good amount of damage, healing and tanking on the king to get him down. Sounds like this is similar to it, but with a siege of the outer walls added. I bet this can be fixed and reevaluated to make it more fun in the future.

Somehow, I imagine that those 30-40 guys involved had a boatload of fun. If it is so easy to do, the Order should take Destruction's capitol in revenge. Now wouldn't that be fun?

Clearly, the developers at Mythic and the FFXI team responsible for creating the 18 hour boss battle have some valuable lessons they can learn from each other.

i actualy find that very funny, i knew that war would slowly fail, now watch and heed my word escapist, many more posts will follow this one about more aspects of the game will fail

It would nice if the forces of Order brought together a decent force to fight back. Come on guys, don't be like the 'good guys' in WoW.

archwiccan:
i actualy find that very funny, i knew that war would slowly fail, now watch and heed my word escapist, many more posts will follow this one about more aspects of the game will fail

Umm.. whatever you say, Nostra Darmus.

archwiccan:
i actualy find that very funny, i knew that war would slowly fail, now watch and heed my word escapist, many more posts will follow this one about more aspects of the game will fail

Thats very encouraging of you, i've not found anything in War that will be game breaking. Conan had so many game breaking things that a million patches wouldnt fix it. War just needs to be tweaked abit like any other new MMORPG, i personally think that in afew years War will be consistently at about 1/3rd of WoW's pop assuming that never game goes and screws their players over.

So much for everybody claiming that war would be superior to wow in every possible way. New homework for all the Waiting on Warhammer people: think of an acronym that fits "Whoaor" and comes down to "only here till lich king"

There are not enough Roflcopters in the world for this event... In fact, we may have to draft the seals too.

Please...OH PLEASE...Please let an ingame player at the time be able to have captured footage and upload to YouTube soon.

I'd love to watch this.

Well, no MMO is perfect. WoW had a shitton of similar problems when it was first released.

That being said, Warhammer >>>>> WoW

This article's title appears to be untrue.

That post refers to a Keep in a fourth tier open RvR area...not a city seige at all.

Its a fair old run away from the city...not a "City Seige" at all.

Keeps do take about 20 minutes to take...and 20 minutes to take back, too.
It is a requirement to seige the city, sure.
So you'd need a similiar sized group defending that Keep if you wanted to seige the city.
Then hit the city itself.

I've seen massive amounts of quite detailed content just levelling up my own peaceful city...previews showed plenty of detailed content for seiges.

Malygris, you might want to check your facts before posting such an incorrect title.
I have a lot of respect for the Escapist.

This looks sensationalist and, frankly, a lie or misinterpretation.

It is not up to your usual standards.

tendo82:
Clearly, the developers at Mythic and the FFXI team responsible for creating the 18 hour boss battle have some valuable lessons they can learn from each other.

That made me laugh. Of course, I agree with it.

WolfLordAndy:

As a member of Order on the server in question (Karak Eight Peeks) I feel sad that I couldnt have even helped it I wasnt out having fun with friends/asleep for uni the next day. As I actually have a life and am only level 20.

Destruction seem to have just powerleveled a lot of numbers up to tier 4, which unless mythic sort it, order can look forward to no capital for a while. I enjoy the content and Tome of Knowledge in WAR, and wish to continue my slow leveling to soak it all in. Why should I have to power level just cause destruction is full of kids with no commitments. :(

Reason #104 I don't bother with MMORPG's anymore.

Lvl 64 Klutz:

WolfLordAndy:

As a member of Order on the server in question (Karak Eight Peeks) I feel sad that I couldnt have even helped it I wasnt out having fun with friends/asleep for uni the next day. As I actually have a life and am only level 20.

Destruction seem to have just powerleveled a lot of numbers up to tier 4, which unless mythic sort it, order can look forward to no capital for a while. I enjoy the content and Tome of Knowledge in WAR, and wish to continue my slow leveling to soak it all in. Why should I have to power level just cause destruction is full of kids with no commitments. :(

Reason #104 I don't bother with MMORPG's anymore.

Really, that far down? Or are they chronilogical according to time conceived?

Or (the most likely option) did you just make that up entirely?

Personally, I'm not getting back into MMOs until the KOTOR MMO, which I hope will be good, seeing as I'm a total star wars nut, I'll probably stick around until the Apocalypse.

Guys, this is not referring to a city seige at all.

Its a single Keep made for level 30's to 40 to fight over.

The writer of the article misinterpreted the forum post.
He also lacks knowledge of WAR.

People, this is release.

Also, one faction was crammed, the other was sleeping.

When it was tested in a controlled environment that actually has DEFENDERS, it went fine.

Quit whining, they know how to fix it.

EDIT: And FFS it's NOT a city siege it's a T4 Keep in the middle.

Ivoryagent:

Joeshie:
Well, no MMO is perfect. WoW had a shitton of similar problems when it was first released.

I don't understand, does that somehow excuse the developers' incompetence?

In certain situations, yes it does.

There seems to be quite a bit of misinformation floating around. If this was indeed a City siege, this sounds rather bad... but some people are saying that it was just a tier 4 keep siege. Can anyone confirm one way or the other?

EDIT: From what I can gather from the thread, a bunch of hardcore Euronerds power-leveled to tier 4 and exploited a glitch they learned about during beta to take the city. Because most people have lives, there were few players at a high enough rank able to defend.

Fuck the ram, fuck siege weapons of any sort and screw taking on a whole castle of guards, I know where they store the spare key!!! XD

That is classic but hey. Brand new game, cant expect it to be perfect right off the bat. As long as Mythic can laugh it off and admit they "really messed up" then I'm cool with it.

Wombats:
This article's title appears to be untrue.

That post refers to a Keep in a fourth tier open RvR area...not a city seige at all.

Its a fair old run away from the city...not a "City Seige" at all.

Wombats:
Guys, this is not referring to a city seige at all.

Its a single Keep made for level 30's to 40 to fight over.

The writer of the article misinterpreted the forum post.
He also lacks knowledge of WAR.

Pyronox:

EDIT: And FFS it's NOT a city siege it's a T4 Keep in the middle.

Ok, for all those saying it was just a T4 keep. It wasnt. Trust me, I'm on the server that this happened. And we've had Altdorf locked for quite some time as they broke Reikward (The City Siege map) and then broke into altdorf and fucked around in their for however long doing public quests. I don't think they got to Karl Franz at all and killed him. But they definatly broke into, and raped Altdorf.

They also owned ALL of T4 dwarfs, all but 1 of T4 elves. (As you require 2 full possessions in order to attack the capital.

Reminds me of Shadowbane.

-- Alex

So 1 server out of how many glitched a city seige?

They didnt even kill the king! So they basically failed without any order fighting them!

I am destro and find all of this highly ammusing... we knew Order people suck but for Destro to fail with no opposition? Karak Eight Peaks, EPIC FAIL!!!

They'll fix it. Yawn.

But....was the kitten saved?

Alone Disciple:
But....was the kitten saved?

Disciple, I think it's time you found out. There is no kitten. You killed it in your anger.